Democracy as We Knew It When I was born in 1954, the United States with its $390B in GDP, represented 7.23% of global GDP. In 1954 we were the beacon of democratic light. We had just saved the free world from the horrors of Fascism that had spread from Germany to Italy and Spain and was blooming in its own Asian version in Japan. We can’t even talk about Latin America in those days since…
Going Bald This is purported to be the hottest day of the year out here in San Diego. My weather.com app (now owned and operated by the once-venerable IBM) tells me it is already 87 and the sun has just come up. The high is supposed to get to 109. Yesterday was the first time since their installation in April, that my Tesla Wall Batteries got a workout. The electricity grid from San Diego Gas…
Feelin’ Hot, Hot, Hot It’s been a hot month here on the hilltop. My pattern has been to spend the early morning catching up on news and perhaps writing my daily story, then go work outside doing something on some project or other for the late morning hours, working up a sweat. Then, after a dip in the spa or cooling shower, I go into the coolness of the house to do my serious work.…
Quick Like a Bunny I am getting in the habit (does two or three days constitute a habit yet?) of writing tomorrow’s story in the morning hours out here in the garden on my throughly described garden desk. I think what I like best about the view are my little stand of resurgent bonsai redwood trees. When they arrived and I placed them in the rock garden over a month ago they were immediately shedding…
Choppers Yesterday, our little Blind Betty had to spend the day at the vet’s office dealing with the first of what I am sure will be an array of medical issues this sweet old dog will have to endure. One might argue that “investing” in an aged dog is unproductive, but nothing could be further from the truth. Pets are rarely economic choices, they are emotional choices. Man does keep and use animals (other than…
A Pain in the Neck Quick, without thinking too much, which do you get more often, a pain in the ass or a pain in the neck? I’m betting on the later. I will admit to having had a hemorrhoid or two in my sixty-six years and I may have pulled a glut muscle once or twice, but pains in the ass are pretty rare by my estimation. But pains in the neck are way…
The Longest Days Last night I stumbled on a Netflix series about the people around Adolf Hitler and how the National Socialist German Workers’ Party grew to prominence and control in Germany. The bottom line is that it was a slow and steady process that took fifteen years to take serious root and then lasted for twelve years. It started in 1918 as a direct result of the ignominious defeat of Germany in WWI and…
My Garden Desk When building out my garden recently, I had a heavy 3/8”-gauge steel pipe 8” in diameter, welded to a two-foot steel plate, left over from a shadesail pole that was installed. When I saw it, I saw a table base for some reason and the very small part of me that is penny-wise said that I should repurpose such a wonderful piece of steel. Steel was only introduced into human existence a…
Sunday School I was baptized Catholic because my mother was raised Catholic and because we were living in Venezuela at the time (my father was Venezuelan and my mother worked for the Rockefeller Foundation in Venezuela). But after my parents were divorced (yes, they were both Catholic and yes, they were both technically excommunicated for that) and the next thing you know we were in Costa Rica without my father. The thing about Costa Rica…
The Other Side of the Mountain You’re wondering where you remember that turn of phrase from. It was the title of a movie in 1975 about an Olympic hopeful skier (Jill Kinmont) that gets paralyzed in 1955 and has to put her life back together afterwards. The title implies that we spend a lot of time pondering the mountains we seek to climb, but often climbing down off the mountain is actually much harder and…